Review of
Five-Place
Mathematics Tables For College Students, by Earle Bigsbee
Five out of five stars
This book is a
look back at one of the main features of a mathematics education before the
advent of calculators. At that time, two of the most critical needs for success
was a book like this and the ability to read and understand the tables. The
values of logs, trig functions and basic operations such as squaring and cubing
are all present. Forty-one of the most widely used derivatives and 199 of the
most commonly used integrals are also included.
While
technology has rendered this book an obsolete museum piece, I still found it
interesting. Even though you may not use it, a glance through it is an exercise
in the history of how mathematics was done. It is also an opportunity to pay
your respects to the people that computed these values, their hard work made it
much easier for the subsequent mathematical generations.
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